Accidental Omelettes and Other Mom Recipes You Didn't Know You Could Make

I don't know about you, but being a mom has totally changed my perspective on cooking. Whereas cooking was once a strange mysterious process that basically eluded me, it's now a total breeze. In fact, as a mom, there are some recipes that basically don't take any skill as a cook at all. These recipes practically make themselves, and as an added bonus, they contain a lot of unintentional cardio. Here are three of my favorite mom recipes.

Accidental OmelettesThese are a godsend for a hungry mom who doesn't mind eating her child's breakfast while the child rummages in the pantry for the sugariest, most processed food she can find.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 Tablespoon butter
• 1 Egg
• 1 Tablespoon milk
• Dash of salt

Instructions:

• Intend to make scrambled eggs for your child. She needs lots of protein and far less sugar and she'll actually eat scrambled eggs.
• Heat the skillet to medium.
• Begin the normal process of making scrambled eggs (melt the butter in the skillet, scramble the egg, milk and salt in a bowl).
• Pour egg mixture into hot skillet.
• Hear crying from across the house.
• Go attend a boo boo.
• Run back and turn off the heat so you don't burn the house down.
• Completely forget about eggs.
• Feed sniffling child a pop tart.
• Return 5 minutes later to find scrambled eggs have turned into an omelette in the bottom of the pan.
• Fold.
• Eat.

Evaporated Water

This is by far the easiest mom recipe. If you can boil water, you can make this.

Image via The Kitchn

Ingredients:

• Pot
• Water 

Instructions:

• Get out box of Kraft macaroni for dinner.
• Fill pot with the required six cups of water.
• Without measuring, because let's be honest, you have been making this since like junior high.
• Set heat to high.
• Child shows up.
• Child says something super cute.
• Get into a game of tickle chase with child.
• Child runs into dining room table, bonks head, cries.
• Auditorily hallucinate your mother's voice saying "NO RUNNING IN THE HOUSE, ELIZABETH!".
• Realize you're a failure as a mother.
• Cry.
• Get boo boo bunny.
• Turn on Caillou.
• Cuddle.
• Suddenly remember pot.
• Run to turn off burner.
• Douse molten pot in cold water in sink.
• Praise Jesus that you didn't burn the house down.
• Attend to the burn you've just sustained from grabbing the pot handle.
• Order pizza.

Charbroiled Chocolate Chip Cookies (and I helped!)
This recipe is perfect for someone who wants to practice the mixing process of baking, but not the actual baking process of baking. It's also great if you're on a diet, because you end up with half the edible cookies you intended to. This is the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe, but it's really the process that's important, so you can substitute your own recipe if you so please.

Image via Limerick's Blog

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2  large eggs
• 2 cups chocolate chips

Instructions:

• Preheat the oven to 375.
• Cream together butter and sugars.
• Child hears mixer and runs into kitchen.
• Child says, "You makin' COOKIES?!".
• Allow child to pour vanilla (after you measure it, you're not making that mistake again).
• Beat in first egg while child cries "*I* wanted to crack the eggs!".
• Allow child to crack second egg.
• Pick egg shell out of batter.
• Measure out flour.
• Allow child to pour flour into separate bowl.
• Clean spilled flour off counter top, try to eyeball the amount and add to the bowl.
• Measure baking soda and salt, allow child to pour into dry ingredient bowl.
• Get out a whisk to mix dry ingredients.
• Allow child to mix dry ingredients.
• Child mixes dry ingredients as if her arm was a helicopter rotor.
• Clean dry ingredients off counter top, pray that no baking soda was lost.
• Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients, allowing child to pour one cup of dry ingredients at a time into the bowl.
• Clean dry ingredients off counter top.
• Add chocolate chips and mix.
• Grease the pan even though it says not to because I DO WHAT I WANT.
• Drop rounded spoonfuls of cookie dough onto pan.
• Try in vain to stop child from eating raw dough.
• Chase child around kitchen to get spoon back.
• Turn on Barney.
• Go back to cookies, finish spooning out one panful, there will be more dough left in the bowl.
• Put cookies in to bake.
• Forget to set timer.
• Check Facebook.
• Bring child to potty.
• Argue with child about how much toilet paper should be used.
• Refuse to allow child to leave bathroom without washing her hands.
• Suddenly remember cookies when smoke alarm goes off.
• Bring pan of charbroiled cookies outside on the sidewalk to cool.
• Open all the windows and try to wave the smoke away from the smoke detector.
• Peel nutcase dog down from ceiling fan.
• Open fridge, look longingly at the bottle of wine.
• Realize you're the only adult in the house and close the fridge.
• After cooling, scrape charbroiled cookies into the trash
• Calm down crying child who really wanted a black cookie.
• Bake remaining dough.
• Remember to set the damn timer this time for 9 to 11 minutes.

COOOOOOOKIES!

Well! It's been a couple of weeks since I have been able to blog, after my last entry, Vivi's stomach virus made the rounds and we all had a turn being sick. After we had all pretty much recovered, Bella and I decided to surprise the family with some delicious treats!



Everyone in my family is a cookie monster. I mean, we are all thoroughly obsessed with cookies. My husband has been asking me for a while to make him some homemade white chocolate macadamia nut cookies, so I decided to do just that. Bella and I went to the grocery store and bought the white chocolate chips, and we bought whole, raw macadamia nuts from the bulk foods aisle at H-E-B. I used this recipe, with the addition of toasting the macadamia nuts. I heartily recommend you purchase your nuts on the bulk foods aisle of your grocery store has one, they are fresher and cheaper than what you can find prepackaged on the baking aisle. My grocery store has several options of the more popular varieties like peanuts and cashews, but only the one option for things like pistachios and macadamia nuts, both of which were offered whole and raw.

Unfortunately, whole, raw nuts can't be used in cookie recipes without modification. First of all, whole macadamia nuts are enormous! You'd have to have a jaw like a python to eat them. If I had time, I would have liked to chop them up with a knife, but I was taking care of the kids while baking so I settled for leaving them in the bag I bought them in, and smacking them a few times with the flat side of my meat tenderizer. Doing this ends up with some huge chunks and some tiny, microscopic nut particles, which is not ideal, but we do what we can with what time we have. So after I busted the nuts (THAT'S WHAT SHE SAID) I tossed them in some browned butter and a dash of sea salt, and put them in the oven at 350 degrees for five minutes. This process gave the nuts a nice, robust flavor that you don't get with raw nuts.

After that I simply followed this recipe, which is pure perfection.

These cookies are thick, soft, and chewy – just what you want a chocolate chunk cookie to be. They’re not too sweet, except when you happen across a nice cool hunk of white chocolate, and when that happens at the same time as when you get a bit of salty macadamia nut, it’s pure cookie nirvana.
Author: Kitchen Treaty
Recipe type: Dessert
Yield: About 36

Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup (packed) dark brown sugar
¾ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
¾ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg (optional)
1½ cups white chocolate chunks (about 8 ounces, chopped)
1 cup coarsely chopped roasted salted macadamia nuts (about 4½ ounces)

Instructions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line cookie sheet with parchment paper or Silpat.
In the bowl of a stand mixer affixed with paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes (or use a large bowl and a hand mixer).
Add the brown sugar and granulated (white) sugar and continue beating on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
Add the eggs one at a time, continuing to beat each time until well-incorporated. Mix in the vanilla.
In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.
With the mixer on low speed, carefully add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix just until the ingredients are incorporated. Stir in the white chocolate chunks and the macadamia nuts.
Scoop a generous tablespoonful of the dough (I use this cookie dough scoop) and roll into a ball. Tear the ball in half, turn each half a quarter turn, and smoosh the dough back together with the torn side now at the top of the cookie. Gently shape so that the dough ball is taller than it is wide and place on cookie sheet about three inches apart.
Bake for about 10 minutes, until edges of cookie begin to turn golden brown. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 – 10 minutes on cookie sheet so the cookie can set. Carefully move to wire rack to cool completely.
Cookies stay fresh when kept in a sealed container at room temperature for 3 – 4 days, or can be frozen for up to two months.